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Mathematics in Ancient and Medieval India c4.s3.t10: Śrīdhara (c. 850-950 A.D.)

Mathematics in Ancient and Medieval India c4.s3.t10

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English

Śrīdhara (c. 850-950 A.D.)

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Śrīdharācārya's *Pāṭīgaṇita*² is a work on arithmetic and mensuration. He dealt with multiplication, division, square, cube, square-root, cube-root, fraction, rule of three and the areas of plane figures. Eight rules are given for operation involving zero but division by zero is not one of them. His method of summation of different A.P. and G.P. and solution of the problems pertaining to mixtures of things are interesting. He for the first time gave a rule to extract the root of ax²+bx=c, which is known usually as Śrīdhara’s formula.

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² Ed. by Sudhākara Dvivedi, Nirnayasagar Press, 1879; Ed. with English translation and notes by Kripa Shankar Shukla, Lucknow University, 1959.

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There remains a great deal of controversy about his time and place of origin. Some scholar opined that he was a Ācārya Brāhmin of Bengal and a Saivite Hindu, and others assigned him to the South India. Neither of these views are considered tenable by Shukla.¹ From a comparative study of the works of Śrīdharācārya with those of Mahāvīra ( 850 A.D. ) and Āryabhaṭa II ( 950 A.D. ), he came to the conclusion that Śrīdharācārya flourished between c. 850 A.D. to 950 A.D.

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